He’s still young, so he’s pretty thin and translucent, but if I can get him to work through a few batches of kombucha, he should grow up and get big and strong, and won’t look so flimsy.

For now, he’s living in a big jar or sweet tea, nomming away at the sugar and fermenting the tea.

(please ignore my messy counter)

When I first put him in, he sank to the bottom pretty quickly, but within a few days he had floated back to the top. About a week into the process, I took a long-weekend trip to visit Christine (yay!). Before I left, there was a thin film on top of the tea, and while I was gone, Sam must have been hard at work, because there is now a pretty impressive baby SCOBY growing on his back.

I’ll give the tea another 5-7 days to ferment, since I want Sam to eat as much of the sugar as he can so that the end result will be a nice, tart kombucha. At this point, it looks pretty promising that it will turn out!